OKARA, Pakistan — Sultan Mehmood Gujar supported Islamist militants fighting in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India and even donated money to them, until he attended an innovative 40-day lecture series by a moderate cleric aimed at countering violent extremism.
The course, given at an Islamic school in a hotbed of militancy, convinced the 46-year-old property dealer that the militants were wrong to claim they were waging holy war, or jihad, justified by the Koran, the religion’s holy book.
“I was shocked to discover that what the militants were doing was against Islam,” said Gujar, sitting on the floor at the madrasa in Okara city where the lectures were delivered. “Now I call them terrorists, not jihadis.”
Fazal ur Rehman, the cleric who runs the 400-student madrasa, recorded each of the two-hour lectures that he and others gave this past summer and would like to distribute the DVDs to reach a wider audience. But he lacks the money.
The U.S. has created a new unit in Pakistan that aims to leverage such grassroots efforts by working with local moderates to counter violent extremism — the first of its kind set up by an American embassy anywhere in the world, according to U.S. officials. The existence of the unit has never before been reported.
The U.S. chose Pakistan as the site for its new venture because it is home to a vast network of Islamist militants who have been fighting U.S.-led troops in neighboring Afghanistan for more than a decade and have even organized attacks on American soil.
The three-person unit in the U.S. Embassy public affairs section was established in July. It plans to work with local partners, including moderate religious leaders, to project their counter-extremist messages and push back against the militants’ extensive propaganda machine, said U.S. officials.
“There are a lot of courageous voices speaking out against extremism here in Pakistan,” said Tom Miller, head of public affairs at the U.S. Embassy. “Our job is to find out how we can amplify those narratives.”
